Community Engagement

Everybody deserves a place to call home, and the UNC Charlotte community is helping to ease Charlotte’s affordable housing crisis.

The Habitat for Humanity Campus Chapter at UNC Charlotte will start construction on a Habitat for Humanity home during Homecoming week.

The Charlotte Teachers Institute (CTI) will host a public reception to share research by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) teachers and stories from those who participated in the 2019 Civil Rights/Racial Equity trip. This reception, which includes a poster presentation, is scheduled for 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 5, at Johnson C. Smith University’s STEM Hall/New Science Building.

For the first time, UNC Charlotte will be a campus hub for the highly prestigious Millennium Fellowship program, with 20 undergraduates from across the University chosen to implement the program’s LIFE Skills Initiative with area high school students.

UNC Charlotte archaeologist Sara Juengst spends her summers working in South America. So by the fall, she’s ready to engage with the Charlotte community and some of its youngest residents. She finds that audience at Kids Fest, a free interactive educational event designed for children age 10 and under and their families.University City Partners, a nonprofit organization that helps drive development in the University City area, created Kids Fest to expand the minds of children and parents in the Charlotte region.

On Friday and Saturday, Aug. 16-17, volunteers will unite on Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools campuses to assist with outdoor projects.

UNC Charlotte and IKEA Charlotte have joined forces to provide college students with a dedicated clothing closet to better prepare them for job interviews.

Margaret Kocherga’s Instagram comes alive through the vivid photos and videos she posts, illustrating her life as a student in the Nanoscale Science Ph.D. Program at UNC Charlotte.

As a child, Renee Welsh-Noel ’16 was interested in dance. So one of the camps she enrolled in through UNC Charlotte’s Camps on Campus summer program was “Global Beat.”Welsh-Noel learned styles from around the world: an Irish dance, salsa and a traditional Japanese folk dance. “I remember we learned a hula dance one year, and I still remember it to this day,” said Welsh-Noel, who earned a degree in dance performance.

Fred Whitfield, president and chief operating officer for the Hornets Sports & Entertainment, is the 2019 recipient of the UNC Charlotte Distinguished Service Award.

The Charlotte Teachers Institute is sponsoring the community event “The Art and Chemistry of Light” on Tuesday, May 21, at the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art.

This “Teachers as Scholars” event will feature presentations and discussions with local educators who studied the topic together in a 2018 Charlotte Teachers Institute (CTI) seminar, including UNC Charlotte chemistry professor Tom Schmedake and 11 Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools teachers.